


Red Dahlia

by MarionThorne



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M, Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 02:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarionThorne/pseuds/MarionThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even Jack's wild imagination and supernatural experiences wouldn't have prepared him for a sudden mass plague of a literal zombie virus. He's gotten stronger in his years in the conflict, but he's not sure if he can do this alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Dahlia

There wasn't a single fluttering to alert his unconscious mind that anything was wrong. His spine was supported in some places and yielded in others to the soft material beneath him. Gently resting atop his other side was a heavy fabric, not soft but not scratchy, that kept him comfortably warm. Under one arm was another soft, fabric covered item. It was also warm, and felt like a lifeless animal beside him, keeping him company despite its inanimate nature. 

Ah, yes; that's his stuffed dog. Slowly, his mind began whirring back to life, clearing the slime of sleep from its cogs and gears in order to function. He couldn't quite bring himself to open his eyes yet. The stuffed dog - he had really loved Skelanimals when he first decided to be 'goth', but had hidden most of them in his closet out of embarrassment - brought him comfort. Blearily, he thought that waking up meant unhappiness. While he was asleep, he had the dog as a companion. Wakefulness was equated with loneliness.

Damn it all. He abruptly snapped up in bed, and he knew this was going to be a bad day. After all, not many days in the life of Jack Spicer were good.

 

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He hissed when he bumped his forearm against the counter he was currently eating at. The bruise from the previous showdown still hadn't healed - as a matter of fact, it was still currently a rather stunning mottled purple interspersed with bits of green and brown. The one currently hidden underneath his favorite red Frankenstein's monster shirt held similar colors, though it was much bigger in that it started at his armpit and ended at his lower back. He likely had a broken rib or three, he bemused. He hadn't had much time to think on it before collapsing into his bed the night previous.

Jack wished he could be eating his cold bowl of cereal in his lab, but after one too many accidents involving various liquids and electrical circuits, he decided to keep food where people generally store it. He still resolutely refused to eat in the dining room with his parents save the occasions they practically forced him too.

Despite his exhausted sleep, he woke up relatively early, so the aforementioned donators to his life should be eating just in the room over. A glance at his watch revealed that it was just before seven o' clock, just the time his parents usually ate. Yet, he heard no sounds from the dining room. There were no clink of glasses or silverware against plates, no habitually forced polite conversation just barely reaching his ears, nor the sounds of cloth napkins sliding against the stupidly expensive table cloth.

Were he of a lesser mental capacity, he would've dismissed it as them getting up late. However, the four years of fighting in the Xiaolin-Heylin conflict along with the analysis of his genetic parents' behaviors made him wary. He would take a peek into their bedroom were they not in the dining room after breakfast, just to be safe.

The rest of his breakfast was finished in silence - which was also unsettling to him. Though the mansion was often quiet, it was never anything near this muffled silence. He could hear the whirr of electronics and the ticking of a clock, along with something unfamiliar and too quiet to identify. The thought came to him that whatever was making the unidentifiable background noise may have been an animal that somehow had gotten into the house. Mother would throw a fit.

Dumping his bowl and spoon into the sink - he would swear up and down that the leftover milk spill was not him - Jack made his way upstairs to the second floor, where the bedrooms were located. By this point, saying he was unsettled would be an understatement. While he had grown better at hiding and controlling his reactions to his fear, his paranoia and ability to be easily startled hadn't decreased in the slightest.

He hadn't seen a single member of the mansion's various employees through his walk down the long stretches of hall, and the closer he got to his parents' room, the louder the noises he'd heard earlier became. He could remember many times when he'd been very sick, before he'd bio engineered himself to be immune to the more common maladies and diseases. He'd responded with nothing scarce of single word replies and various noises. 

The sounds were coming from the door he was standing directly in front of: his parent's bedroom. Jack could hear both his mother and father, and yet it sounded so different than them. Their voices sounded scratchy and breathless. Raising a hand, he knocked at the door. Their grunts and wheezes stopped.

"Mother? Father? I'm coming in."

They were sick, he thought, and were he the borderline obsessive paranoid about not getting sick like he used to be, he would've run screaming. As it were, he still really, really wanted to run screaming.

His parents were not sick.

Both of their attention was focused fully on him, a rare and entirely unpleasant occurrence. These instances always ended in either shouting, hitting, or both. Both of their stares were unsettling individually, in normal circumstances.

At the moment, with their glossed over irises and scleras shot through and bleeding internally, they were nothing short of terrifying.

He would deny to his grave that when his mother screamed, revealing a few chipped and missing teeth and blood, that he pissed his pants. He automatically took off at a run, seeking the nearest exit. As it happens, the nearest exit wasn't all that near, being on the first floor and at the other end of the mansion.

All of his instincts screamed to look back and identify his attackers - not parents anymore, no, he didn't know - but he'd learned enough to know that unless their footsteps were directly behind him, looking back would only give them ground. He could hear their footsteps several feet behind him, as well as their angry snarls and yells. 

He wanted to know, and yet he didn't have the time or the security to wonder on such inquiries. That had also led to his downfall on one too many occasions. So he continued to run - fast enough to keep ahead of them, yet not at such a taxing pace he would tire.

Rounding a corner, he screamed when he tripped on something large on the ground. His head hit hard, though thankfully his goggles absorbed some of the impact, and he swore intensely. He should've been watching the ground, watching above, what was-

That guy, the one with the large liver spot on his head. He was elderly, and his daughter had just given birth a few months ago. He stared at Jack, his gaze leveled with the goth's at the ground their heads were both laid upon. His irises were the same color as Jack's parents, but his sclera were clear.

The sanguineous mess of his throat was anything but clear. Jack felt bile rise in his throat, but the sound of feral humans growing nearer drove him back to his feet. He took off at a sprint to the door, which by this point was now only a hall's dash away. Deciding to play it safe, he took a short detour to the fireplace to grab the poker, and ran back to the double doors of safety. 

There were more pairs of footsteps now, although how many he couldn't ascertain. They were closer, though. Not close enough.

With one last burst of speed, he burst through the entrance doors, slammed them closed, and hooked the fireplace poker into the metal door handles. He was so glad circumstance had provided that the handles were secure, as not a second after the poker had locked them shut, the doors were slammed against and began rattling. The sounds of rage and denial echoed out into the early morning.

Jack leaned against the door, no matter how much his instincts screamed at him to get away from it. The adrenaline was wearing off, and despite that he'd just woken up, all he wanted to do was sleep. He denied himself that, though, as he had to find somewhere safe to reach in order to be able to think things out.

He settled somewhere in the middle of his two options and opted to instead slip down to the ground, bury his make-upless face into his palms and cry.

 

It took no less than half an hour to pull himself together. Throughout that time, the banging on the door hadn't stopped, though thankfully the handles were still in place. No new comers had showed up either. 

It looked as if... they had been infected with some sort of nervous system effecting virus. His studies into engineering and various technologies had undoubtedly collided with science and medicine, and as such, he was afraid of what that meant for him, and for everyone dear to him. Sure, not many of them held him dear in return, but that was beside the point.

The question popped into his head of how one became infected with this... whatever this was. He was only allowed a split second to wonder if he himself had become exposed to it, but forced that train of thought off immediately. He had to keep moving. His mansion wasn't safe anymore, as he knew there were at least 50 staff members on the grounds at any given time, and if they were infected as well, he'd be done for.

His immediate thought was to go to Chase's lair. The idea that there would be anyone other than the warlord himself near there was ludicrous. That was quickly shot down. He was obviously a nuisance to Chase, and so even if he could make the trek up the mountain without his bots, which he had no way of signaling with his watch inside, Chase would likely just demand his dismissal as soon as he arrived. Then there were the other possibilities. What if Chase had been exposed to that virus as well? He may be able to outrun his luxury softened parents and a few mansion staff, but he suspected that even if Chase was at his worst, it would still be trice Jack's best.

Towns were out of the question. He'd learned to fight better, but if it came down to it, he didn't think he'd be able to kill someone with his bare hands. Actually, he didn't know if he could kill someone even with a weapon. He'd never even seriously injured anyone before, and the thought of causing another's death made him feel something indescribable. He had yet to draw the,"first blood," as Wuya liked to call it, and so while he could certainly see the appeal in offing others for his own advancement, he didn't know if he could do it himself.

Though it had only been an hour or so, it had already been a long day. He could think of it later, but Jack knew he couldn't simply wander around without a weapon, or food now that his mansion was inaccessible. He wished Wuya still had her ghostly form so she would be around to give him some advice, or at least tell him what was going on.

Sure, he'd been a bit more buried into his studies lately than usual, but surely he wouldn't have missed news of a massive epidemic of some kind of... fucking zombie virus. He felt stupid thinking it, but it was true. Though, after talking to an evil ghostly mentor and witnessing a man transform into a dragon, he supposes he really shouldn't.

For now, he'd go find something he could injure with and some food, just in case he wound up stranded in the woods or something.

 

Thankfully, Jack’s parents had picked a remote but not desolate part of China to settle in, so he all he had to do was check the first house he came across. If they were infected as well, then he could… well, haul ass until he lost them and check back later. If they weren’t, maybe he could get some information about the whole situation. Maybe the inhabitants would be do gooders and he could sucker some supplies from them.

It took no less than two hours to find another abode, which was thankfully not a mansion he would have to navigate. It was a western style house with dark green paint, likely holding nothing more than the standard rooms. After his knock went unanswered for several minutes, Jack decided to enter and hope for the best. He turned the knob slowly, noting that it was unlocked, and opened the door with similar speed. His head poked around to peek inside for danger, but for what he could see, there was no one there.

This house was more quiet than his mansion had been – dead silent. There were no strange animalistic noises, no background hum of machinery and gadgets. There was not a single creak of floorboards or thump of footsteps. The place was utterly deserted, or, he added as an afterthought, the inhabitants had met a fate similar to the elderly man he’d tripped over in his hallway. He certainly hoped not. Dead bodies surely couldn’t make for a clean and virus-free environment.

The door had opened into a living room. The carpet was clean, although his vision picked up on a thin film of dust upon the glass coffee table. The entire color scheme seemed to have a calming tone to it – whites, light colors, and browns. Combined with the morning light filtering in through the windows, it was calming. 

Jack shook himself. No, it’s not time to rest just yet. 

After a quick scan of the living room turned up nothing important, other than a few missing family photos from the empty shelves and mismatched spots on the walls, he walked into the next room. This one happened to be the kitchen, and he could see that it led into a hallway and had a back door on the other side. This room, too, appeared to be unused. The cupboards were open, but not bare – only a few food items appeared to be gone. There were a few sheets of stapled together paper on the table. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be a print-out of an online article.

 

**“NEW NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE HITS CHINA**

**The homocerebrumliquefaciens disease has finally spread throughout the entire eastern hemisphere, the Asian countries being the last to succumb to it. China held out the longest after enforcing numerous marshal and international laws to keep immigrants out and insure those who’ve become infected from spreading the pathogen to as few people as possible.**

**Currently, the western hemisphere has managed to keep the disease out. It is unknown whether or not they are working for a cure.”**

**“HOMOCEREBRUMLIQUEFACIENS: THE STORY**

**It is up for debate where homocerebrumliquefaciens (HCL) originated, though despite the attempts of several governments to keep it quiet, the most popular opinion seems to be that the disease originated in a bioengineering lab in France. It was supposedly built to be used as a mass biological weapon of destruction that was somehow leaked from the lab and into the stream of civilians. Skeptics wonder about the sincerity of this, as no other substances are known to have been released with it.**

**Regardless of where it came from, it spread rapidly from its origin point in France to the surrounding European countries. Within 6 months, the whole of Europe and some of the Baltic nations were completely infected and fighting for survival. By today, the year mark since the disease was released, nearly the entire western hemisphere has been infected.”**

Jack took note that this article must have been written before the previous one. Apparently whoever printed this didn’t resize the pages, so the bottoms were cut off along with the dates.

**“THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE DISEASE**

**HCL is an engineered virus whose basic structure comes from BSE, which is more commonly known as mad cow disease. HCL begins by attacking the nervous system, leaving the victim in immense pain before the disease finally progresses up to the brain stem. It then spreads throughout the brain and shuts down every section except for the brain stem. Due to this, those infected with HCL will no longer be able to communicate, nor will their memories and various other functions remain intact. Those who have progressed to this stage may be identified by: unsteady or limping gait, guttural noises as opposed to words, blood in the sclera, clouded over irises, and heightened aggression.**

**Those who have contracted the disease should be incapacitated immediately, as they are dangerous and may spread the disease to others once it has fully taken over the host body.**

**HCL is spread through shared bodily fluids, such as blood, saliva, and semen. Those who have had intercourse with, been bitten by, or by any other means gotten the aforementioned bodily fluids into the blood stream from an infected individual should be isolated and dealt with. There is no cure.”**

 

The rest of the papers’ contents amounted to basically the same. The mass of the population was likely infected and dangerous. Nowhere was safe for Jack now, unless he magically teleported to one of the countries in the Eastern hemisphere somehow. He thought for a moment that perhaps if he begged nicely, Chase or Wuya would take him there. Perhaps they would go as well. The thought was quickly snuffed into lifelessness. If they hadn’t left already, which was unlikely, they weren’t going to.

For the second time that day, Jack wanted to just break down and cry. However, he didn’t feel as if, by this point, he had anymore tears to shed. He’d already seen his parents turned into these… infected. He didn’t particularly care for them, but it was still jarring. He’d seen a man with a family, a newly born grandchild, with his throat ripped out and left to be forgotten in the halls of a dead mansion. He’d come to realize that while he was isolated and static within his laboratory, working on new inventions and machines, the world had been moving rapidly around him and he hadn’t bothered to check its progress. He had continued to invent, rush out into battle in a feeble attempt to retrieve a Shen Gong Wu, and then rush back to fall asleep and repeat the cycle with no room for variation or intervention. He was sure by then that was a fatal mistake.

His only hope of survival lay in the hands of two people who saw him not fit enough to lick the scum from their feet. He stood up from the table he had sat at to read and moved to look around for a pack. Eventually, he found a luckily large backpack in the bedroom closet. He took one of the thin blankets from the cupboards and went back to the kitchen to pack as much food as he could inside. He picked nutritious and filling substances, like bread and cans of beans, and placed them within. He tried to avoid too many cans; while he could certainly carry much more than he used to, he still couldn’t carry a large bag full of canned goods.

One last sweep around the house left him with a short sword and a dagger. If those articles were any indication, he’d need them.

When he reached the door, Jack only took a single look back at the cozy little home he’d just ransacked. Whoever lived in it before was long gone to who knows where, and he knew that, no matter how slim his chances were, he’d never see it again. 

There were only a choice number of roads that the nineteen year old Jack Spicer could take. One of them lead to a mountain – protection and safety – while several others led to some form or another of death. His chances were slim, but that had never stopped him before. 

 

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Jack Spicer was not exhausted. When he showed up a bit bruised and ready to flop down onto his bed and immediately pass out, he was exhausted. When he stayed up for days at a time to just add that one last touch, just one more, and then fall asleep over one of his machines, he was exhausted.

His stomach cursed vehemently to express its starved state. He hadn’t eaten in well over two days. The last of the food from the house he had found a month or two ago had been eaten well before then; he’d been living off the various bits of wildlife he could kill, which was scarce in this rocky area.

Jack attempted to force himself up by using the rock he was leaning against as a crutch. When his injured leg practically screamed in protest, he quickly toppled over face first into the dirt. That surely wasn’t helping the almost certain infection that would set in. He’d only broken his leg yesterday, and yet he had last so much blood before finally getting far away enough from that infected to rip his pants into a tourniquet that he was rendered debilitated quickly. He’d sat at this rock to rest since then, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to get up and move. Running away from the infected with a broken leg had forced the bone to puncture his skin – he didn’t think he could take any more of that.

Resignedly, he supposed he would die here.

He’d thought about it a few times, dying that is. Once, after witnessing an infected mother kill her own child, he’d disputed whether or not to take his own life. He didn’t want to die. He was so close. He’d finally reached the base of the mountain he’d been getting lost and walking in circles to find.

At the very least, he could tell himself he tried.

Closing his eyes, he thought that if he happened to die in his sleep, at least he was somewhat close to Chase.

 

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His mind clung to unconsciousness as if it were a warm blanket on a frigid winter night. As it was, there was obviously no blanket to heat his body. Gusts of wind were blowing over him, chilling him. One part radiated bursts of intense pain each time the air passed over his body. Why was that? It hurt. He whimpered and clung to the closest thing his hands could find: cloth against a solid surface. 

The surface was warm, he realized. He burrowed his nose into it as his hands unclenched slightly. Flesh. There was flesh beneath these clothes, which meant the supports beneath his back and knees were arms. Someone carrying him would explain why he was moving despite the fact that he was asleep.

Well, Jack wasn’t all that asleep anymore. All he had to do was open his eyes. They were heavy, but curiosity gave him the strength to raise them up, revealing the man carrying him.

His limited line of sight only allowed him to see shoulders and a section of throat – however, these obviously belonged to a male. The shoulders were squared, and the adam’s apple sat between beautifully muscled chords of neck hidden underneath sun kissed skin. Behind them was hair, long and black. It appeared to have a dim sheen of green in the afternoon light.

He gasped and tensed up in the arms holding him. It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even made it to Chase’s lair, _he’d just given up-_

And yet, a glance upwards revealed the chiseled features of the very man he had been seeking since he became aware of the end of the world. Beneath the well groomed mane of ebony emerald hair were the lightning centers of Chase’s vision, resting right on him.

In some circumstances, he would’ve been terrified; in others, delighted. At the moment, however, he was simply lulled into a sense of tranquility. 

Chase's eyes were currently set into a glowing light underneath the afternoon sun, giving them the appearance of liquid pools of gold set beneath the blazing reptilian swords that were his pupils. At the moment, they weren't cruel and unforgiving. They were powerful and ensured safety to those he decided to take under his wing for whatever reasons.

Jack decided, then, that he could really care less whether he died of his injuries at that moment or spontaneously burst into flames. He didn't have to fight any more - now, his life was completely in Chase's hands and Jack would be happy with whatever fate the dragon lord deemed fit for him. His lips curled up just a fraction, which in turn seemed to gently pull at the lids attempting to drag Jack back into unconsciousness. Totally relaxed and at peace, he surrendered without a fight.


End file.
